


Eye of the Storm

by Riona



Category: Persona 3
Genre: F/F, F/M, makeouts and misery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-12 06:55:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29880768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Riona/pseuds/Riona
Summary: “If this is the end, I just... want to be close to all of you.” Yukari pauses. “Does that make sense?”
Relationships: Arisato Minato/Takeba Yukari, Iori Junpei/Takeba Yukari, Kirijo Mitsuru/Takeba Yukari, Sanada Akihiko/Takeba Yukari, Takeba Yukari/Yamagishi Fuuka, Yukari/Everyone, mentions of Minato/everyone
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15
Collections: The Character/Everyone Collection





	Eye of the Storm

By this point, it’s pretty much an open secret that Minato’s dating every girl in the dorm.

It pissed Yukari off at first; why couldn’t he just settle on someone? By now, though, she’s kind of accepted that that’s just who Minato is. He’s too easily drawn to people, too eager to please; he can’t turn anyone down. It’s almost cute, in a frustrating sort of way.

When he eventually kissed her, a part of her was wondering if he’d already done this with the others. Fuuka, maybe, or Mitsuru, if Mitsuru was capable of falling for anyone.

Maybe even Aigis? Would that be physically possible? What would it be like?

In a way, it’s almost like Yukari is dating all the others herself, at one remove.

It’s not a thought that _bothers_ her, exactly. It’s hard to find the words for how it makes her feel.

-

Yukari can’t really remember how they get from the conference room to the entrance lounge, after Ryoji tells them what’s coming. She seems to regain some form of consciousness as she reaches the boys’ floor, tells Ken to go to his room. It seems ridiculous that her mind’s latched on to _make sure the kid gets enough sleep_ in this crisis, especially after all the times they’ve dragged him to Tartarus at midnight, but it’s not like she can do anything else.

She doubts he’ll sleep. She doesn’t think any of them will. She sends Koromaru with him, at least, to keep him company through the night.

She reaches the ground floor and walks over to the sofas in a kind of numb haze.

The end of humanity, in a matter of months. She can feel the terror waiting for her, but it’s like it’s behind translucent glass. The whole thing’s too big to take in; it doesn’t feel real to her yet.

Junpei’s on one of the sofas already, elbows on his knees and hands clasped around the back of his neck. She sits down next to him, maybe closer than she usually would. Close enough to feel the warmth he’s radiating: a reminder that, even if they’re all heading towards death, they’re still here and alive right now.

Whatever that’s worth.

She leans against his side.

Junpei didn’t react at all when she sat down, but he sits up a little straighter now. “Yuka-tan?”

It feels...

It feels good to hear his voice, if anything can feel good right now. They’ve all been so unnaturally silent; it hasn’t been this quiet in the dorm since the first days after they lost Shinjiro.

She wonders if they’ll see him again, after they die. It seems like too much to hope for.

Junpei shifted when she leant against him, his arms no longer on his knees. She lets herself slip further sideways and down, until she’s lying with her head in his lap, her hand resting against his thigh. She closes her eyes.

“Yuka-tan?” Junpei asks, again. It’s less flat this time, some kind of emotion creeping in around the edges. Something nervous.

She can’t really explain what she’s doing. She just needs to know someone’s there. She’s surrounded by people, but she felt so isolated, somehow, in this silence; she needs to _feel_ them there, she needs to hear their voices.

It occurs to her, perhaps too late, that Minato might have an objection to this. They’re still technically dating, and, yes, Minato’s dating half the dorm, but she doesn’t know how that works in reverse.

She opens her eyes and looks at him; he’s sitting on the other side of the coffee table, the sofa against the wall.

Minato doesn’t look angry. He’s watching with a slight, puzzled smile. Akihiko, next to him, is frowning, his eyes flicking from Junpei to Yukari to Minato and back again; he looks like he’s been presented with a mathematical problem well beyond his level and he doesn’t recognise half the symbols in it.

She’s managed to spark some kind of emotion in Minato, in Akihiko, in Junpei: something other than the overwhelming terror or flat despair they’ve suddenly had dumped over them. Maybe all she’s done is confuse them, but at least that’s something _else_.

“Yuka-tan?” Junpei asks, again. “Uh, what’s happening here?”

Yukari raises herself up on her arms a little, so she can speak more clearly. “Do you mind if I kiss other people?” she asks, her eyes on Minato.

_Like you do?_ she almost adds. It’s probably too catty. They’re all hurting enough; she doesn’t want to say anything with the intent to wound.

Minato looks sheepish, embarrassed, like the time she caught him coming out of Fuuka’s room. “I – I don’t mind.”

It’s a strangely quick answer. Maybe he’s thought about it before. She guesses it makes sense that it might have crossed his mind, given how unrestrained his own dating habits are.

“Uh,” Akihiko says.

“Um, excuse me?” Junpei asks, his voice climbing in pitch. “Are you talking about me? Are you asking if – I mean, shouldn’t you be asking _me?_ ”

Yukari rolls over on the sofa and plants the back of her head in his lap, looking up into his face. “Do you mind if I kiss other people, Junpei?”

Junpei lets out a semi-hysterical laugh. “Goddamn it, you _know_ that’s not what I meant.”

They look at each other for a moment. Yukari wonders if he’s thinking of Chidori.

There’s hushed conversation that she can’t make out from somewhere behind the sofa: Fuuka and Mitsuru, she thinks. It’s better than the silence.

Yukari sits up. “We can forget this,” she says, quietly.

“I don’t even know what this is,” Junpei says. He hesitates; it feels like a much longer hesitation than anything in a normal conversation. “Uh, but – if you’re serious, I don’t think we have to forget it.”

What is she doing? Everyone’s watching.

The thought comes to her, but she doesn’t really feel it. Embarrassment doesn’t seem to have the power to touch her right now.

She kisses him.

The noise Junpei makes against her mouth sounds kind of surprised, even though he obviously knew it was coming. She knows how he feels; she’s kind of surprised by this herself, and she’s the one who _initiated_ it. Fuuka’s hushed muttering to Mitsuru, at the edge of Yukari’s hearing, becomes slightly louder.

Junpei’s clumsier and more urgent about this than Minato, probably less experienced, doesn’t seem to know where to put his hands. Did he ever do this with Chidori, or did she die before they had the chance?

What a weird, sad thought to have in this situation. She pulls away.

“Um,” Junpei says, but all that follows it is a moment’s unsteady breathing.

She glances over at Minato, to check his reaction. The embarrassed amusement is gone, replaced by a dark, quiet intensity. He doesn’t look angry; he looks... drawn into the scene, somehow.

Akihiko, next to him, looks absolutely mystified.

“So, uh,” Junpei says, “what _was_ that? Are you still with him? Do you want to—” He hesitates. “I guess there’s not really time to start a new relationship, huh?”

“It’s not that,” Yukari says. “I’m not looking for anything past right now. If this is the end, I just... want to be close to all of you.” She pauses. “Does that make sense?”

There’s a pause. And then Fuuka’s voice, hesitant, from over by the reception counter: “To _all_ of us?”

Yukari takes a moment to ask herself if she meant it. She’s already crossed a boundary of intimacy she couldn’t have imagined breaching this morning, with Junpei; is she saying she wants that with everyone here? Even the girls? Minato, Junpei, Fuuka, Mitsuru, Akihiko?

She wants it. She can feel a quiet confidence in herself, below the dull terror of the future.

She doesn’t know if it’s romantic love, really, or even attraction. She just cares about all these people, and there’s a comfort in having them close, even in a situation like this, where there’s little comfort to be found. If she can somehow get closer, that’s what she wants.

“All of you,” Yukari says. “I mean, if you’d be okay with it. You can just – you can just go to your room, if you like, you can forget about this. Anyone who doesn’t want to stay, I mean. I don’t really know what I’m doing.”

She looks around. Nobody’s moving. She doesn’t know if they’re okay with it or they’re just waiting to see what she does next.

She meets Fuuka’s eyes.

“I think I understand,” Fuuka says, after a moment.

Yukari shifts up onto her knees so she can look more comfortably over the back of the sofa, resting her arms on the top. “You do?”

“I don’t know if it will help,” Fuuka says. She’s approaching the sofa, small steps. “But I don’t want to do nothing. I want to try what we can.”

Yukari lets out a tiny breath of a laugh. “It’s not like it’s gonna save the world.”

Maybe, if they’re inappropriate enough, Nyx will turn back in disgust.

“We can’t save the world,” Mitsuru says, just slightly too tense to be matter-of-fact. It’s not like Yukari didn’t know it already, but hearing it said so bluntly still feels like a hammer blow to the chest.

“Which means we need to set different goals,” Fuuka says. “Maybe it’s enough just to think about something else for a while.”

Fuuka seems so much more sure of this than Yukari was expecting her to be. Yukari would have thought Fuuka would be the most likely to leave, if she’d really thought about any of this beforehand. But Fuuka’s step falters as she draws close to the sofa, to Yukari, and she looks down, blushing.

“Hey,” Yukari says. “It’s okay. You don’t have to do anything.”

Fuuka shakes her head, suddenly firm. “No, I want to.”

She puts a hand on Yukari’s shoulder, and then slides it around to the back of Yukari’s neck, and then kisses her, over the back of the sofa. It’s—

Yukari’s never kissed a girl before, she wasn’t sure what to expect, she wasn’t sure if it’d be too weird. In the moment, though, she’s not thinking about the weirdness of kissing a girl; she’s just kissing Fuuka, in the same way she was just kissing Junpei a moment ago. They’ve all come to know each other so well, they’ve fought together all these months, and now they’re tied together by this strange, terrible knowledge that only they share. They’re so close already; why would it feel strange to kiss any of them?

Fuuka’s eager and anxious and she’s eventually the first to break away, laughing nervously. Yukari closes her eyes and ducks her head and presses her forehead against the back of the sofa, letting out a slow breath.

“Am I dreaming?” Junpei asks. “’Cause, if I’m dreaming, I _really_ hope it started back before Ryoji told us any of that stuff.”

It’s weird to be reminded that everyone else is here, that they just _watched_ her kiss Junpei and then Fuuka. But at least wondering what they’re thinking is something to occupy her mind, something that isn’t the short future ahead. Maybe the distraction is helping them in return.

She hears footsteps and lifts her head from the sofa cushions, shifts around to see. It’s Minato, coming around the side of the table towards her. Like Fuuka, he hesitates as he gets closer, but Yukari’s not sure it’s embarrassment; he glances at Fuuka and Mitsuru.

“Oh, everyone knows,” Mitsuru says, sounding slightly impatient. “You’ve never been especially subtle. I think we all understood we weren’t entering into an exclusive arrangement.”

“Everyone knows _what?_ ” Akihiko asks.

Yukari’s so used to feeling Akihiko is smarter than her. It’s sort of reassuring to be a step ahead of him on this. He has such a strange blind spot when it comes to relationships; perhaps it comes of getting involved in fighting Shadows too young.

They’ll have to keep an eye on Ken’s emotional development as he grows up, she finds herself thinking, before remembering that Ken will never have the chance.

She tries to focus on Minato instead, as he stoops down over the arm of the sofa.

Kissing Minato is familiar and grounding, comfortable. It’s not the same as kissing Junpei or Fuuka, the strangeness and novelty of it overwhelming her fears for a moment, but there’s something reassuring in it. At the moment, Yukari can only really believe she and the others are still here when she’s touching them.

It feels urgent, suddenly, for her to kiss Mitsuru and Akihiko as well. Maybe Akihiko first; he seems less intimidating, somehow.

She breaks away, looking over at the other sofa. “What about you, Akihiko-senpai?”

Akihiko looks alarmed.

Minato laughs, small and incredulous. “You couldn’t wait until we were done before you asked?”

“Oh, uh, sorry.” She’s not sure if she’s apologising to Minato or Akihiko.

Minato shakes his head. He looks amused, at least, rather than annoyed. “It’s fine.”

“You know, this is all making me feel a lot less special,” Junpei says.

Yukari starts to laugh herself, quietly, abashed and overwhelmed and finally starting to register how _bizarre_ this situation is.

“Is this a joke?” Akihiko asks, carefully. He’s watching her as she laughs. “Are you all in on it?”

“I’m not in on anything,” Junpei says. “And... honestly, I’m not sure Yuka-tan making out with everyone just to mess with you would actually be any less weird.”

“Okay,” Akihiko says. “I’m... I’m not trying to judge. But I don’t really understand what’s happening. I don’t know... what you need from me, or why.”

“I don’t _need_ anything,” Yukari says. It feels like a lie, it feels like she needs this desperately, but she doesn’t want to force Akihiko into it. “I want to...” _Be close,_ she wants to say, euphemistic, but Akihiko seems so confused that she should probably be as clear as possible. “I want to kiss you. Or – or more, if you—”

In her peripheral vision, she’s aware of Junpei turning to look at her, eyebrows _very_ raised.

“I want to kiss you,” she says, again, feeling herself flush. “Just – for right now. I’m not asking for a relationship, I won’t expect anything tomorrow. We’d still just be friends.” Maybe it’s presumptuous to call herself his friend. “But... right now, I think this is helping.”

Akihiko looks at her for what feels like a very long moment.

“This is important to you, right?” he asks.

“I know it’s weird,” Yukari says. “It’s kind of hard to explain.”

“I still don’t really understand.” Akihiko stands up from the sofa, his movements somehow less confident than usual. “But I want to help, if I can.”

It’s not the answer Yukari was expecting. Maybe your friend asking for a kiss feels like it has less pressure on it if you’ve just seen her kiss three of your other friends. Or maybe it’s just that there’s too much pressure already for them to really feel the weight of anything new.

Akihiko glances in Mitsuru’s direction. “Um, does it – have to be here?”

The others being here feels like part of it, somehow. But Yukari doesn’t want to make him uncomfortable. Or more uncomfortable than she’s made him already, at least.

“I guess it doesn’t _have_ to be.” She stands up, too, edges between the seat and the coffee table and out past Minato, who’s still standing by the side of the sofa. “Maybe – your room?”

She was going to suggest her own room, changed it at the last second. She wants to believe this won’t feel too weird tomorrow. But she doesn’t know if she wants her bedroom to remind her of it, just in case.

“Uh, I have an objection,” Junpei says. “ _We_ all got kissed in front of everyone. I don’t see why Akihiko-san gets privacy.”

“We could all go to his room,” Minato suggests.

It’s hard to tell if Minato is joking sometimes.

“I don’t think the actual physical location is what’s bothering him,” Yukari says.

“I don’t know if it’d be a good idea to go to my bedroom,” Akihiko mumbles. Is he thinking the same thing Yukari is, that it’d be uncomfortable to have that association with his room, or does he want to avoid kissing her in a room with a bed? The idea makes Yukari feel a little strange. “Maybe everyone could just... close their eyes?”

“Hey, I just got this sprung on me,” Junpei says. “ _I_ didn’t get to make any deals.”

“Junpei,” Yukari says.

Junpei makes a grumbling noise. “Fine.”

Yukari walks over to where Akihiko is standing, near the bookcase. Her legs feel a little unsteady. She doesn’t know if it’s because of this situation or the coming apocalypse.

“You okay?” she asks, quietly, as she approaches. Akihiko’s still looking nervous.

“Don’t ask me that,” he says. “Just do it. I think the suspense is the problem.”

“Okay,” Yukari says. “Eyes closed, everyone.”

She glances quickly around to make sure they’ve listened. It almost feels _more_ intimate like this, somehow, with the others still here, knowing what’s happening but unable to see it.

Akihiko’s whole body tightens up when she kisses him, Yukari can feel it through their closeness, and she almost laughs. It seems hilarious, somehow, that he can be tense about this in the face of what’s coming.

Every living person dead by spring. Maybe it isn’t that funny.

He starts to relax into it, just a little, she thinks. Maybe it’s her imagination. But it’s clear he has no idea what he’s doing; he’s relying completely on her lead.

It goes on for longer than she’d have expected, and she realises suddenly that he’s taking her lead on the timing as well. He doesn’t know when or how to end a kiss; he’s waiting for her to do it. She breaks away, leans for a moment against his chest, warm and living and real.

He puts his arms around her, hesitantly, and then drops them almost straight away, like he’s embarrassed. She hears him swallow.

“I – think I might understand it,” he says after a moment, very quietly. “How it helps.”

“Can I ask a question?” Junpei asks, loudly.

It cuts through the moment in a way that sends a flare of annoyance through Yukari, and it’s such a normal, familiar thing, being annoyed with Junpei, that it’s actually somehow comforting. “What?”

“You said something about kissing _or more_ ,” Junpei says. “I need to know if that applies to all of us.”

Akihiko backs away from Yukari slightly, with timing that Yukari suspects is not coincidental.

“We can talk about that later,” Yukari says. “I still need to ask the oth—” She cuts herself off. “I still need to ask Mitsuru.”

_The others_ , she’d almost said. It’s so strange; Shinjiro’s been dead for longer than he was ever living here with them, but somehow for a moment she’d thought there were two people to go.

If Shinjiro were still here—

It doesn’t feel right to have these thoughts. She tries to keep Shinjiro out of her head.

She turns to look across the room at Mitsuru, who’s still by the reception counter. Yukari finds herself strangely embarrassed, more than when she approached any of the others.

“You’ve been pretty quiet, Mitsuru-senpai,” she says. “I don’t really know what you think about any of this.”

Mitsuru folds her arms, looking thoughtful.

“Under other circumstances, I’d consider it a frivolous distraction from what we need to do,” she says at last. “Under the current circumstances, where there’s nothing we _can_ do, I suppose I can understand it.”

Yukari finds herself a little relieved. There’s not much room for relief with the end of everything looming, but, even so, she doesn’t want Mitsuru to judge her. “And...?”

She doesn’t finish the question. It sits quietly in the air between them.

“We have limited time to broaden our horizons,” Mitsuru says at last. “I might as well take the opportunity.”

-

They’re all here, Yukari knows, as soon as she kisses Mitsuru. Every moment of physical contact has helped to confirm it. The six of them, they’re here, they’re alive. Not for long, maybe. But for now.

Someone touches Yukari’s hand while they’re still kissing, the hand that’s not in Mitsuru’s hair. She’s not sure who it is, her eyes closed; Minato, maybe? But she takes the hand in hers, she grips it tightly. Whoever it is, it’s someone in this room; it’s someone she loves.

Maybe it’s weird, what’s happening here. She’s not sure how far things are going to go, or whether any of them will be able to look at each other tomorrow. She’s not sure if any of this is even right.

A few weeks from now, though, will that matter?

She’s thinking of the love hotel, a little, the one where the Shadow got into their heads. There’s a part of her that almost longs to be back there, as ridiculous as that is. Everything seemed so simple for a while; there was nothing in her head but the desire for pleasure, and she couldn’t see any obstacles to it.

It’d be easier if she could think like that again, if all she wanted was to be touched. She wants to live. But apparently that’s too much to ask, and at least being touched is a distraction.


End file.
